In the libraries, which composed the principal wealth of the religious houses, the cartularies of the diocese were preserved with great care. The charters of institution, and the patrimonial titles of the chief abbeys, are both the proof and the reward for the services rendered to civilisation by the monastic establishments: one abbey was given a domain on the condition that it put the waste lands into cultivation; another received its lands with the understanding that it opened asylums and places of hospitality for the poor and sick, for pilgrims and for strangers; while a host of documents taken from the cartularies relate to the instruction of the clerks, the education of the novices, the splendour of public worship, and the duty of the ecclesiastical vassals when the suzerain raised the ban and the arrière-ban, &c., together with all the details of monastic life which are connected with the various social movements of each territorial district (Fig. 247).
Outside the abbeys there lived a population whose manual labour was necessary to their inmates, and profitable to the material interests of the house. Women, even when doing penance, and under religious vows, were strictly forbidden to enter the monasteries. The aged mother of an eminent monk, John of Gorze, unwilling to separate herself altogether from her son, took up her abode just outside the walls of his abbey, where she spent her time in making cloaks for the monks.
It was around the abbatial close, perhaps beneath the shelter of a second walled enclosure, not so strong nor so high as the first, but still capable of resisting the attacks of the marauders which were so frequent in those days of feudal disorder, that were built the shops, the stalls, and the sheds which served for the sale of the crops, the cattle, and the agricultural and other produce of the abbatial domain (Fig. 248). On the anniversary of the festival of the saint to whom the monastery was dedicated there was a fair—sometimes several—which attracted large crowds.
St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolite order; St. Mayeul, Abbot of Cluny, and the reformer of the Abbey of St. Denis; St. Dunstan, the resolute Archbishop of Canterbury, who reformed the clergy of the British Isles; Adalbert, son of a Duke of Lorraine and nephew of Hugh Capet, who was elected Bishop of Metz, after having been monk at Gorze; St. Cadroé, descended from the Kings of Scotland, Abbot of Vaussey and contemporary of Adalbert, with whom he was associated in the reformation of the abbeys in the north-east of France, were among the leading figures who, in the tenth century, represented the reformed monachism. Unfortunately, their wholesome influence could not make itself everywhere felt; it was a period of disorder, of pitiless and bitter wars, of usurpations of every kind. Upon every side misery reigned supreme; the serfs attached to the domains of the canonical churches and to the monasteries left them to find some more certain means of livelihood. The Cathedral of Metz was in this way deprived of eight hundred serfs, who were heads of families. The only independent voices raised on behalf of these victims of oppression came from the great abbeys, such as Stavelo, St. Arnulph, Cluny, &c., to which monarchs and popes, under the pretext of dedicating churches (Fig. 249) which had been recently built or restored, repaired in secret to consult, with many members of the higher clergy, as to the political affairs of Christendom.
Fig. 248.—North View of the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés, as it still existed in the Seventeenth Century.—A, outer gates; B, houses in the enclosure; C, church square; D, church; E, Lady chapel; F, sacristy; G, small cloister; H, great cloister; I, library; K, dormitory; L, refectory; M, kitchen; N, dormitory of the Superior; O, offices; P, inner courtyard; Q, houses for the wine-presses; R, bakehouse; S, stables; T, garden; V, infirmary; X, infirmary garden; Y, lavatory; Z, dormitory for the guests. 1, abbey palace; 2, abbey garden; 3, courtyard; 4, outer courtyard; 5, officers’ apartments; 6, stables; 7, barns; 8, houses in the abbatial enclosure; 9, bailiff’s house; 10, outer gates; 11, bailiwick prisons.—Fac-simile of an Engraving in the “Histoire de St. Germain-des-Prés,” by Dom Bouillart, in folio: 1724.
Fig. 249.—Dedication of the Church belonging to the Monastery of St. Martin-des-Champs, Paris, destroyed by the Normans and rebuilt by King Henry I. The artist has represented—1st, the ancient Church of St. Samson dedicated to St. Martin; 2nd, the counts and barons who signed the charter for the re-establishment of the monastery; 3rd, the archbishops and bishops who were present at the dedication of the new church.—Fac-simile of an Engraving from Don Meurier’s work, “Historia Monasterii regalis Sancti Martini” (4to, Paris, 1636).
Fig. 250.—The Small Cloister of the Chartreuse at Pavia, with the cupola of the church in the background (close of the Fourteenth Century).